The need for new and improved methods and agents for the treatment and prevention of pain is a significant ongoing concern in medicine. The therapeutics now being used mostly focus on the treatment of the symptoms of pain without treating the actual cause of pain. In addition, these therapeutics are not necessarily specific and can cause many undesirable side effects.
There remains a need to better define the mechanisms involved in pain sensation. There also remains a need to provide, based on the newly discovered mechanisms of nociception, new and specific therapeutics that can treat or prevent pain via intervention at the actual source of pain.